The Body is
Water
Finalist for the PEN/Hemingway
Award
An ALA Notable Book
of the year
Finalist for the Minnesota
Book Award
Barnes and Noble "Discover
Great New Writers"
Three
months pregnant
after a two-night stand, Jane Haus is suddenly adrift in her
life, as another small life floats within her. After resigning
her job teaching English, she returns home to confront her
ambivalence about impending motherhood - drawn by an irresistible
inner homing device to the ramshackle house on the New Jersey
shore where she passed a tumultuous childhood. Here unresolved
specters of guilt and recrimination still haunt the living,
hovering over Jane; her gruff and eccentric father who spends
his days in a room full of clocks; and her brilliant, estranged
sister Bee, as efficiently organized as the summer is formless.
Amid the soothing crash of water, in the blissfully hot privacy
of an attic filled with memories, Jane will try to piece together
the puzzle of her family's history. And in a chaotic season
of growth and change, she will seek an understanding of the
mother she and her sister never knew... reaching out for the
elusive solace only family can offer.
"She writes so sensitively about the experience of pregnancy
that you won't soon forget Jane's intimate relationship with
her developing child."
--MS.
"Extraordinary... Schumacher conveys the pain of family
life in wonderful, muted, edgy prose... She knows just how
to construct the secretive and stubborn facade of a family."
-- Kirkus
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